WHAT: Esotouric's "Haunts of A Dirty Old Man: Charles Bukowski's L.A." bus tour
WHEN: Saturday April 24, 12pm-4pm, departs from Philippe The Original, 1001 N Alameda, Downtown LA (repeats July 24)
COST: $58/person, includes coffee and donuts served at Bukowski's favorite Pink Elephant Liquor Store.
MORE INFO: visit http://www.esotouric.com or call 323-223-2767
RELATED TOURS: Esotouric's April literary series also includes JOHN BUNTIN'S L.A. NOIR on April 10 and JOHN FANTE'S DREAMS FROM BUNKER HILL on April 17.
LOS ANGELES- On April 24, with a repeat engagement scheduled for July 24, Esotouric rolls out its popular and occasional Charles Bukowski bus tour, HAUNTS OF A DIRTY OLD MAN. The tour departs from Philippe The Original, the legendary downtown sandwich shop where postal worker Bukowski often ate while employed across the street at the brutal Terminal Annex sorting facility.
The tour is hosted by Richard Schave, one of the forces behind the recent successful campaign to have Bukowski's one-time bungalow on De Longpre Avenue in East Hollywood declared an historic-cultural monument.

HAUNTS OF A DIRTY OLD MAN spans Bukowski's personal city, from the Skid Row bars where he tuned his young writer's ear to the voices of old rummies to the once-genteel Crown Hill apartments where he fought with his first love Jane, favorite bars and liquor stores, "Barfly" locations to the downtown library, where he discovered his "God," novelist John Fante (subject of Esotouric's April 17 tour).

German born, Bukowski spent most of his life in L.A., working for the US Postal Service, as "Notes of a Dirty Old Man" columnist for the underground press and writing the screenplay for the autobiographical "Barfly." The city and its characters are everywhere in the work, so this tour celebrates the artist within his city with visits to places that were important to him and to his work. The tour includes a stop at Pink Elephant Liquor in East Hollywood for complementary coffee and donuts, though many riders also pick up a little something stronger for the road.

Esotouric has made its name with true crime bus tours (Black Dahlia, Pasadena Confidential) and explorations of literary LA (Raymond Chandler, John Fante, James M. Cain). Next month they'll turn their creative attentions to Bukowski, the prolific poet, novelist and screenwriter whose rough-hewn tales of boozing, wild women and rotten jobs never obscure the deep vein of sweetness and hope that runs through all his work.

Upcoming Esotouric bus tour and special event schedule
Sat March 20 - Maja's Mysteries: Rapture & Release (debut)
Sat March 27 - Raymond Chandler's Bay City
Sun March 28 - LAVA Sunday Salon gathering at Clifton's Cafeteria
Sun March 28 - FREE tour The Flâneur & The City (info at lavatransforms.org)
Sat April 3 – Crawling Down Cahuenga: Tom Waits' L.A.
Thurs April 8 - John Fante Square designation (noon)
Thurs April 8 - FREE John Buntin lecture (info at lavatransforms.org)
Sat April 10 – John Buntin's L.A. Noir crime bus tour
Sat April 17 - John Fante's Dreams from Bunker Hill
Sat April 24 – Haunts of a Dirty Old Man: Charles Bukowski's L.A.
Sat May 1 - Pasadena Confidential crime bus tour with Crimebo the Clown
Sat May 8 - Blood & Dumplings crime bus tour
Sat May 15 - The Real Black Dahlia crime bus tour
Sat May 22 - The Birth of Noir: James M. Cain's So. Cal Nightmare
Sat June 5 - Weird Adams crime bus tour
Sat June 12 - Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice crime bus tour
Sat June 26 - Eastside Babylon crime bus tour
Sat July 10 - Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles
Sat July 24 - Haunts of a Dirty Old Man: Charles Bukowski's L.A.
Sun Aug 1- Reyner Banham Loves LA: South Los Angeles
Sat Aug 7- Reyner Banham Loves LA: The New Chinatowns
Sat Aug 14 - Reyner Banham Loves LA: Route 66
Sat Aug 28 - Reyner Banham Loves LA: The Lowdown on Downtown

For more info on Esotouric, visit http://www.esotouric.com
Esotouric's Kim Cooper and Richard Schave are proud members of LAVA - The Los Angeles Visionaries Association. http://www.lavatransforms.org

Now John Buntin, the author of "L.A. NOIR: The Struggle for the Soul of America's Most Seductive City" (Random House), brings his groundbreaking book to life with a guided tour of the haunts, "hits," and harems where some of the most shocking and influential moments of 20th century crime history played out and an introduction to the two men whose rivalry profoundly shaped Los Angeles — one L.A.'s most notorious gangster, the other its most controversial police chief.

Former street thug turned featherweight boxer, Mickey Cohen left the ring for the rackets, first as mobster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel's enforcer, then as his protégé and successor. A fastidious dresser and an unrepentant killer, the diminutive Cohen was Hollywood's favorite gangster — and L.A.'s preeminent underworld boss. Frank Sinatra, Robert Mitchum, and Sammy Davis Jr. palled around with him; TV journalist Mike Wallace wanted his stories; evangelist Billy Graham sought his soul, declaring memorably that the fast-quipping gangster "has the making of one of the greatest gospel preachers of all time."

William H. Parker was the proud son of a pioneering law enforcement family from the fabled frontier town of Deadwood. As a rookie patrolman in the Roaring Twenties, he discovered that LA was ruled by a shadowy "Combination" of tycoons, politicians, and underworld bosses. His life mission became to topple it — and to create a police force that would never answer to elected officials again.

For more than three decades, from Prohibition through the Watts Riots, their struggle convulsed the city, intersecting in the process with the agendas and ambitions of J. Edgar Hoover and Bobby Kennedy, Mike Wallace and Billy Graham, Lana Turner and Malcolm X, and inspiring writers from Raymond Chandler to James Ellroy. Its outcome shaped American policing and the history of Los Angeles, fueling racial distrust that sparked the Watts riots and continues to this day.

From the streets of Boyle Heights to the downtown movie palaces where the young Bill Parker worked as an usher — and Mickey Cohen commenced his life of crime, Esotouric's luxurious coach passenger bus will revisit the haunts where Parker mentor James "Two Gun" Davis played William Tell — and the gutter where "the Combination" disposed of the garroted bodies of those who dared to cross it. We'll stop by "the glass house," visit the apartment tapped by LAPD sergeant Charles Stoker and "sound technician" Jimmy Vaus as well as the site of Billy Graham's "canvass cathedral," which launched Rev. Graham as a celebrity preacher and began his curious effort to "save" Mickey Cohen. We'll check into Cohen's old commission office, hear a first-hand account of how Mickey operated, and visit the Lincoln Heights jail, where on Christmas 1951 events transpired that inspired the opening of the book L.A. Confidential. With Kim Cooper, the creator of Esotouric's true crime tours and founding editrix of the new website www.inSROland.org riding shotgun, there will also be plenty of surprises. So get on the bus and get ready to meet the Dragnet-era LAPD — and the "the Mickey Mouse Mafia" — on this very special Esotouric bus adventure.

Focusing on Chandler's middle period – "Farewell My Lovely," "Lady in the Lake" and a few short stories upon which these novels are built, "Bay City Blues" among them-- this tour will explore Chandler's take on the Westside, the real life rackets and murders which gave Bay City its wild reputation, and the elements of the old community that have survived layer upon layer of gentrification.

As the bus rolls from point to point, your guides will draw the lines between Chandler's life and his fiction, offering insight into his nomadic life with wife Cissy, the enigmatic redhead who appears in many forms in his short stories and novels.

Locations for the tour include:

The ruins of Pickfair (Mary Pickford's former beach house, and close to the launch for the gambling ships)

Site of the former Santa Monica City Hall (4th & Santa Monica) immortalized in "Farewell My Lovely."

Former site of Thelma Todd's sidewalk cafe (just West of Sunset on the PCH), inspiration for the Lindsay Marriot House in "Farewell My Lovely."

Santa Monica and Brentwood residences for Ray & Cissy.

Books & Short Stories covered in the tour:

Farewell My Lovely
Bay City Blues
Lady in the Lake
Red Wind
The Little Sister

Gentle reader,

When not trawling the archives for tales of past century misbehavior, several of your 1947project / On Bunker Hill bloggers host Esotouric bus adventures on themes of crime, literature, architecture and rock and roll. You'll see our upcoming events calendar in the sidebar, but to really stay informed about these popular and provocative tours, you want to subscribe to our weekly email announcement list, packed with sneak previews, links to tour photos, discount offers and contests.

This week's announcement went out on Tuesday, and includes a drawing to win a copy of the astonishing box set "People Take Warning! Murder Ballads & Disaster Songs 1913-1938," the musical equivalent of one of our crime bus tours. The lucky winner will be picked on July 4, and you still have a chance to enter. Just email and say "put me on the list, I want to win PTW" and we'll sign you up and send you the most recent announcement, where you'll also find a discount offer for the July 12 New Chinatowns urban history tour ending with a dim sum /wine tasting, news of a repeat edition of Visionary Hollywood and of the upcoming Crawling Down Cahuenga: Tom Waits LA.

Another good reason to get on the list: when James Ellroy offered his sold out James Ellroy Digs L.A. tours over the Christmas holidays, most everyone who snagged a ticket was an Esotouric mailing list subscriber. By the time word spread out among civilians, the bus was full.

March 19, 1927
Long Beach, CA

Fred and Lela McElrath had been married for 25 years, and raised three children together, now grown. But just as the couple should have been settling down into contented empty nesthood, a violent disagreement nearly destroyed it all.

Fred wanted to leave Long Beach for Freewater, Oregon, where they owned a ranch; however, Lela was determined to stay put. She moved out of their home at 45 Atlantic Avenue, and Fred spent nearly a week trying to track her down. On March 18, they finally agreed to meet at a neutral location, their daughter's home at 32 Neptune Place, and try to talk things through.

However, Lela refused to reconsider, and walked away from the argument. As she was descending the stairs in her daughter's house, Fred pulled out a gun and shot her twice in the back before turning the gun on himself, firing into his mouth. The shots didn't kill Lena, and when she was admitted to Seaside Hospital, it was assumed that she would recover. However, Fred was barely clinging to life, and in fact, police arriving on the scene initially believed him dead.

Today, things looked drastically different. A bullet was lodged behind Fred's left ear, but doctors expected that he would make a full recovery -- and in all likelihood, be left to stand trial for his wife's murder. The shots fired into his wife's back had punctured her right lung, and she was not expected to live. Authorities stood watch at Fred's bed, waiting to charge him either with murder or attempted murder.

Shockingly, the story has a moderately happy ending. On April 11, a frail Lena McElrath, appeared at her husband's preliminary hearing and was helped to the stand by her son, where she made an impassioned plea on Fred's behalf.

"I do not want to testify against my husband, nor do I want him prosecuted. I believe our trouble was caused as much by me as by my husband. I want to go back to him and begin all over."

Judge Stephen G. Long agreed she should have that chance, saying, "This is a very remarkable affair, but if both parties are willing to forgive and forget and to endeavor to patch up their broken lives, I think the kindest thing for this court to do is to give McElrath a chance."

The charge was dismissed, and the McElraths left the courtroom with their arms wrapped around each other. Lena's wounds were expected to heal completely with time, though Fred would be forever incapacitated by the bullet, still lodged near his spine.

Gentle reader, a fresh manifestation of 1947project has emerged. For the first time, our crime-a-day blog becomes a house-by-house survey, exploring the great lost downtown neighborhood of Bunker Hill. Join us On Bunker Hill to meet the people, homes and peculiarities that called this place their own.

And for even more historic LA oddities with regular updates, visit our current blog In SRO Land, lost lore of the historic core.